Guest guest Posted August 20, 2007 Report Share Posted August 20, 2007 At 11:17 AM 8/20/07, you wrote: >The New York Times (pg. A21), Aug. 16, 2007 >[Printer-friendly version] > >THE BIG MELT > >By Nicholas D. Kristof > >[Nicholas Kristof is a regular columnist for the New York Times.] > >If we learned that Al Qaeda was secretly developing a new terrorist >technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force >tens of millions from their homes and potentially endanger our entire >planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy and deploy every possible >asset to neutralize the threat. > >Yet that is precisely the threat that we're creating ourselves, with >our greenhouse gases. While there is still much uncertainty about the >severity of the consequences, a series of new studies indicate that >we're cooking our favorite planet more quickly than experts had >expected. > >The newly published studies haven't received much attention, because >they're not in English but in Scientese and hence drier than the >Sahara Desert. But they suggest that ice is melting and our seas are >rising more quickly than most experts had anticipated. > >The latest source of alarm is the news, as reported by my Times >colleague Andrew Revkin, that sea ice in the northern polar region >just set a new low -- and it still has another month of melting ahead >of it. At this rate, the " permanent " north polar ice cap may disappear >entirely in our lifetimes. > >In case you missed the May edition of " Geophysical Research Letters, " >an article by five scientists has the backdrop. They analyze the >extent of Arctic sea ice each summer since 1953. The computer models >anticipated a loss of ice of 2.5 percent per decade, but the actual >loss was 7.8 percent per decade -- three times greater. > >The article notes that the extent of summer ice melting is 30 years >ahead of where the models predict. > >Three other recent reports underscore that climate change seems to be >occurring more quickly than computer models had anticipated: > >Science magazine reported in March that Antarctica and Greenland are >both losing ice overall, about 125 billion metric tons a year between >the two of them -- and the amount has accelerated over the last >decade. To put that in context, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (the most >unstable part of the frosty cloak over the southernmost continent) and >Greenland together hold enough ice to raise global sea levels by 40 >feet or so, although they would take hundreds of years to melt. We >hope. > >In January, Science reported that actual rises in sea level in recent >years followed the uppermost limit of the range predicted by computer >models of climate change -- meaning that past studies had understated >the rise. As a result, the study found that the sea is likely to rise >higher than most previous forecasts -- to between 50 centimeters and >1.4 meters by the year 2100 (and then continuing from there). > >Science Express, the online edition of Science, reported last month >that the world's several hundred thousand glaciers and small ice caps >are thinning more quickly than people realized. " At the very least, >our projections indicate that future sea-level rise maybe larger than >anticipated, " the article declared. > >What does all this mean? > > " Over and over again, we're finding that models correctly predict the >patterns of change but understate their magnitude, " notes Jay >Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate >Change. > >This may all sound abstract, but climate change apparently is already >causing crop failures in Africa. In countries like Burundi, you can >hold children who are starving and dying because of weather changes >that many experts believe are driven by our carbon emissions. > >There are practical steps we can take to curb carbon emissions, and >I'll talk about them in a forthcoming column. But the tragedy is that >the U.S. has become a big part of the problem. > > " Not only is the U.S. not leading on climate change, we're holding >others back, " said Jessica Bailey, who works on climate issues for the >Rockefeller Brothers Fund. " We're inhibiting progress on climate >change globally. " > >I ran into Al Gore at a climate/energy conference this month, and he >vibrates with passion about this issue -- recognizing that we should >confront mortal threats even when they don't emanate from Al Qaeda. > > " We are now treating the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer, " he >said, and (perhaps because my teenage son was beside me) he encouraged >young people to engage in peaceful protests to block major new carbon >sources. > > " I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking >bulldozers, " Mr. Gore said, " and preventing them from constructing >coal-fired power plants. " > >Critics scoff that the scientific debate is continuing, that the >consequences are uncertain -- and they're right. There is natural >variability and lots of uncertainty, especially about the magnitude >and timing of climate change. > >In the same way, terror experts aren't sure about the magnitude and >timing of Al Qaeda's next strike. But it would be myopic to shrug that >because there's uncertainty about the risks, we shouldn't act >vigorously to confront them -- yet that's our national policy toward >climate change, and it's a disgrace. ****** Kraig and Shirley Carroll ... in the woods of SE Kentucky http://www.thehavens.com/ thehavens 606-376-3363 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.859 / Virus Database: 585 - Release 2/14/05 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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